The authors present early object relations theorists who broke away from classical psychoanalysis (I. Suttie and H. S. Sullivan). They provide lucid descriptions of the works of M. Klein, O. Kernberg, H. Racker und M. Mahler, whose object relations theory integrated the classical approach and anticipated self psychology. Furthermore, they analyze the gap between object relations theories and self psychology which was bridged by M. Balint, W. R. D. Fairbairn, H. Guntrip, D. W. Winnicott as well as J. Bowlby. The final chapter is an introduction to Kohut's work and describes the development of self psychology into a selfobject theory. Skryť popis